


Pivot

by TriumphShouts



Category: Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, M/M, Minor Violence, Pre-Slash, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:55:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22302205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriumphShouts/pseuds/TriumphShouts
Summary: Violence on violence on violence and still Sami felt like he was just going in circles, an endless stream of hate and revenge. He could fight Kevin every day from now until the end of time and they’d still be squaring up as the universe ended. Kevin would probably find a way to blame the universe ending on him, too.
Relationships: Kevin Owens | Kevin Steen/Sami Zayn | El Generico
Comments: 8
Kudos: 13





	Pivot

The match was over, as vicious and brutal as any had been, leaving them both totally exhausted, but still nothing felt settled. Violence on violence on violence and still Sami felt like he was just going in circles, an endless stream of hate and revenge. He could fight Kevin every day from now until the end of time and they’d still be squaring up as the universe ended. Kevin would probably find a way to blame the universe ending on him, too.

After a match Sami normally felt settled, solid in the knowledge that he’d gone out there and done his best. After a win he felt even better, but now–

Sami turned the corner and almost walked straight into Kevin, who was busy texting. For second before Kevin glanced up, Sami could almost see the Kevin he knew, the friend he’d had for year.

Then Kevin was sneering at him, spitting out the typical vitriol. “This whole fucking hotel and I have to see you in the hall. It’s bad enough I have to see you in the ring”. That Sami can try and brush off, has heard worse. He’s disturbingly used to brushing off Kevin’s hate, though he’s not sure he’s getting any better.

Except as Kevin shoves his phone back into his pocket, Sami catches a glimpse of the picture he’s been looking at. A picture of his son, caught in some typically goofy-kid pose. All of a sudden Sami feels disconnected, so overwhelmed with emotion he’s almost calm. He stood by Kevin when his son was born, hugged him and held his hand and reassured him that he could do this. Sami had held the tiny newborn in his arms after Kevin had turned and told him that Sami wasn’t getting out of helping, gruffness covering emotion.

Sami had made a promise, whispered in French so there was no chance Kevin wouldn’t know how serious he was. He’d made a promise to be there for them no matter what, to make any sacrifice that needed to be made to care for this perfect new life.

And now Sami was never going to be able to keep that promise. Kevin’s selfish hate was going to keep them apart forever.

“I was going to be by your side forever” Sami found himself saying flatly, attacking Kevin in the area he was most vulnerable. Kevin’s approach to emotion was generally duck-and-cover, he’d even joked once that he kept Sami around to do the feeling for him. “ _I swore I’d be there for you no matter what”_ Sami can hear his voice rising as he slips into French. “ _I promised you and now you’ve thrown that away”_. He wants to hurt Kevin how, hurt him in a way he’d never be able to in the ring, hurt him like he’d hurt Sami. He wants to place all the blame squarely at Kevin’s feet and stop thinking about what he’s done wrong, how he might have provoked this.

Kevin reaches for the anger and hate that he’s been trying to muster even since he saw Sami standing in front of him in this stupid hallway. He’s tired and more than a little emotional over missing his family, and totally not ready to deal with this.

“Clearly I meant more to you than you meant to me” Kevin spits, mustering all the venom he could. It’s not enough though, and he can feel the hate slipping away from him. “You were something I could use to get ahead”. He reaches for the same lies he’s been telling himself for months now, repeating them in the vain hope they’ll become the truth.

Sami’s throat is burning, his chest feels like it’s in a vice. “You’re lying again, you have to be! We’ve been friends for _years_ , I was there when your _son_ was born. You weren’t faking that, you _can’t_ have been faking that. Something changed. Don’t you want it to change back? Aren’t you the least bit sorry for what you did? Aren’t you _sorry_ , Kevin?!”

“YES!” Kevin yells, crowding forward into Sami’s space. He’s close, too close because whenever he gets this close to Sami he starts to lose control. “Yes, alright! Yes, I want to go back to the way things were! Yes, sometime I feel sick over what I did! Yes, it kills me that the only time in the foreseeable future when I might be able to say something nice about you is when I’m announcing your entrance into the _fucking_ Hall of Fame!”

His hands wrap around Sami’s head, around Sami’s _stupid, thick_ skull. Part of him wants to bounce it off the wall. “You don’t understand, you _never_ understand. People don’t like me. They didn’t like me when I was fifteen and they didn’t like me when I was on the indies and they sure as hell weren’t going to like me when I was here up against yo- against guys like you.” Kevin pauses, sucking in a breath. This is a bad idea but now he’s started, he can’t seem to stop. “There are only two options if people don’t like you. You either _make_ them like you or you make them _hate_ you, you do that or you don’t draw crowds and you don’t get big matches. And I think we both know which one I can do.”

Sami struggles against him, pushing them apart a few inches. “People liked you on the indies” He protests, but it comes out weaker than he intends.

Kevin shakes his head sadly. “No, Sami. People liked _you_. They liked me because I was with you. When you left, things changed.”

He continues, voice softer. “I’m not an actor. I can’t pretend to hate people, I can’t write a story about us fighting and play a role. The only way I was going to make it here was if I was-“

“A bad guy?” Sami cuts in. “Fine. You convinced yourself that you had to be this mean, horrible person to succeed. That’s spectacularly messed up and total bullshit, but why _me_? Why did you have to do that to me? You could have told me your new, insane idea. You could have ignored me. Hell, you could have asked me to join you!” Sami’s angry suddenly, angrier than he’d been in a long time. He’s angry at Kevin and what he did, he’s angry at himself for still being hung up on it.

But mostly he’s angry at the idea of Kevin sitting in a hotel room and working out how to make people hate him because of how convinced he is that they’ll never love him.

Kevin opens his mouth and to his surprise, it’s the truth that comes out. “I missed you”. He feels deflated, empty. “You would have tried to talk me out of it if I’d told you, and you don’t have it in you to be a bad guy, and the best I ever was in my life was when I was in a ring with you. I just-I wanted that again.”

Sami gapes. Then he slaps Kevin, hard. Kevin’s hands fist in Sami’s shirt automatically, slamming him back into the wall. Apparently he’s a little too predictable, because Sami twists sideways, jabbing a sharp elbow into Kevin’s gut and reversing their position neatly.

Kevin grabs Sami’s neck, pulls his fist back and-

He stops. Letting Sami go with exaggerated care, he lowers his hand. “I’m not getting paid to beat you up in a hallway” He tells Sami, and that seems to work.

Kevin slides down the wall, pulling his knees up to sit back against it. After a moment, Sami slides into place beside him.

“You think you’re going to be the one inducting me into the hall of fame?” Sami says, after a moment. Kevin crushes the tiny smile that threatens to crawl onto his face. He shrugs instead.

“I’m not letting anyone else do it”. He says. Anyone else would just fuck it up, anyway.

There’s more silence, until Sami hears a strange noise. He looks over, and Kevin- is he _giggling?_

“What?”

Kevin can’t help himself, all of a sudden it’s very funny. “You were going to _join_ me? You, who never met a day you couldn’t smile about. I’ve heard you call a fucking _pepperpot_ ‘glorious’. What were you going to do, wear a mask and pout at people? Maybe spill someone’s coffee on their sandwich?”

Sami pouts. He could be tough when he needed to.

Kevin was still going. “Maybe wear a cape too, like some supervillain”.

“El Malvado” Sami mutters sulkily.

“What’s that?”.

“American wrestlers don’t wear masks and capes” Sami said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “So, I’d have to be a luchador. I could be ‘El Malvado’”.

That only made Kevin laugh harder, and then Sami was laughing too and they must have looked like two total idiots.

It happens in between one breath and another – Kevin looks over to Sami and the thing he’d been carefully training himself out of for months and months comes flooding back. It was a feeling, a warmth that filled his chest and threatened to burst out of him.

Kevin clenches his teeth against any traitorous declarations of love that might be tempted to sneak past. He tries to get back some of the hate he’d been clinging to like a life raft, but this latest rupture in the damn had swept it away.

“What do we do now?” Sami asks, and it’s so open, so plainly _Sami_ that Kevin wants to scream. Sami’s not naïve, not dumbly innocent like people think he is. He’s open, and kind, and good, always has been. Always has been too good for Kevin.

Kevin shakes his head. He’s never known how to build things up, that’s Sami’s job. He just destroys them, burns them down and pretends he’s glad he did.

But this isn’t Sami’s mess to fix, so Kevin forces the words out.

“I don’t want to hurt you anymore” he says, and is almost shocked by how much he means it. There was a time when he really did feel a kind of twisted glee at hurting Sami, like he was hurting all those people that wanted to keep him down. Sami became an icon of the things Kevin hated in his mind, and through that Kevin could hate him. Looking over now though, at that stupid fucking face and that stupid fucking beard and that stupid fucking smile…

Wait, why was Sami smiling?

“I still don’t like you” Kevin lies quickly, trying to backtrack. It’s half-true, he doesn’t just _like_ Sami.

Sami shrugs.

“You don’t have to like me” He says with the infuriating kindness that Kevin has heard a hundred times before. That’s the tone of voice Sami uses before he gives all his food money to a homeless person or spends the time he’s supposed to be asleep teaching a 16 year old girl who’s going to be a wrestler one day. It’s a tone that makes Kevin roll his eyes while he secretly smiles because he knows Sami’s not doing it to get attention or be a martyr. That’s honestly how Sami works, how he sees the world.

“I just want us to be happy” Sami says simply.

Well, shit. Kevin’s not sure he can be happy without Sami, at least not when he’s away from his family.

“Maybe I don’t care if you’re happy” Kevin says, not caring if he sounds like a petulant three-year-old.

“Maybe you don’t” Sami agrees, and Kevin knows the horrible mission he’d set out on all those months ago has been effective. He’s convinced Sami that Kevin’s truly been able to discard him.

And as soon as Kevin’s got what he’s been trying for, he suddenly doesn’t want it anymore.

He wants to see Sami smile like that again, and know he did it. No-one else can make Sami smile like he can.

“Then again” Kevin says, as carelessly as he can. “Maybe if you were happy, you’d be less annoying”.

Sami’s eyes light up, too quick to hope, like he always is. He doesn’t speak though, afraid like Kevin is that any wrong word will break this new thing they’re building.

“You know, I don’t have anywhere to be tonight” Sami finally offers back, trying to match Kevin’s careless tone. Of course it doesn’t work, but Kevin pretends not to notice.

“Me either” he replies.

They sit there in silence for a long time, staring at the ugly hotel wallpaper.

Then, carefully, gently, Sami lowers his head to rest on Kevin’s shoulder.

**Author's Note:**

> Like most Kevin/Sami works, full tribute must go to Mithen for her incredible works and meta which inspired me. 
> 
> I think of this as not being set in any particular time, just a point in the endless Kevin-Sami spiral of love and love disguised as hate.


End file.
